Saturday, 30 January 2016

(There are no images for this final post becasue no one scans or uploads later Spacehawk pages. Which kind of tells its own story.)

Hitler brings patterns to the Spacehawk world.

It's not really Hitler, its a satirical, silly Hitler/Mussolini knockoff called 'Moosler'. Moosler orders his submarines to attack US shipping. Spacehawk executes the classic ironic punishment of throwing Moosler into the middle of one of his own tank battles. Running back and forth between the opposing sides, Moosler proves himself to be a ridiculous coward. Spacehawk pulls him out of the battle and Moosler retracts his order out of fear.

And Moosler is wearing a pattern.

Or, not quite a pattern, he's wearing a weird cloth with a checkwork of crosses on it (the full-on swastika never appears in Spacehawk, maybe due to some war-era rule, and the name of Germany is never mentioned. Even when flights of high-tech rocketships burst into the sky, they have either some vague crosslike symbol, or nothing at all.)

Everyone in the Spacehawk universe to date has worn only mono-coloured clothes. Some, like Spacehawk himself have had two colours, or sometimes three colours, but always single, unshaded, un-patterned blocks. The only pink, or north-euro flesh-coloured people have been Spacehawk, his old friend Galar and Hala, Queen of the Noomites, and in most cases the aliens themselves are a strong colour, often green, sometimes tan, orange or yellow.

So the clothes and the aliens skin all fit in with the arrangement of colour and form in the Spacehawk world. Simple, strong, uni-coloured, counterpoised, no mixing, detailing only through black line.

Now Hitler brings a fucking pattern.

The next issue is even worse, the head of a secret enemy airfield posing as a woodsman actually wears a bright, multi-coloured fully-patterned shirt!

This is like the imposition of an alien reality into the fiercely ordered aesthetic unity of Wolvertons creation.

Everything is built on the idea of tight, strong, primary colours mosaicked in strong bold forms and counterpoised to produce that overwhelming stained-glass effect.

If you change the tools, if you change the kinds of colour arrangement that are possible in Spacehawks world, you change everything. It’s like a leaf landing on a chess board. The lines of this flannel-shirted fake lumberjack are the herald of death for the power and uniqueness of the dream.

.......

The Moosler story encapsulates a pair of problems that work together and will gradually chew away at the Spacehawk universe for the remainder of its run, the moral and the visual.

The big, big problem for any Superhero story during WWII is that its World War Two. It's the most serious thing to ever happen. So what, exactly, is Spacehawk, or Superman, doing in that reality?

This is an in-fiction problem of making sense of it, and a moral problem of simple powerful dreams interacting with a harrowing truth which impinges itself more and more onto the minds and lives of the creators.

THE IN-FICTION PROBLEM

Captain America is going to be OK, he's made to be just like a soldier, only *more*, so you can have him fighting on the front lines with the boys in green or have him pulling 'secret missions' where he does something incredible. He can skate back and forth across the margins of reality, battling the Red Skull on a flying wing one issue and helping Easy Company storm a machine gun nest the next.

But Spacehawk is a super-strong, psychic, possibly-thousand-year-old alien scientific genius with a flame gun, an atom gun, an anti-gravity belt, a gang of psychically-controlled robot duplicates of himself and a super-fast space rocket that fires lightning. In His second appearance he uplifted an entire alien race over the space of half a page, he can transplant brains. What is he up to here? How has he not won already? He beats Martian Hitlers in the space of one story.

At first, Wolverton adopts the classic method. He creates a 'higher' reality where the impossible hero can fight an equally-imbued enemy. So the Americans have Spacehawk? The Japanese have an entire fake asteroid which they intend to use to bombard the U.S! The Germans have a flying wing which fires gigantic razor disks into New York! They have an impenetrable Undersea Tank on the ocean floor! They have a fleet of rocket planes faster than any known!

But, over time, something strange happens. The power, immensity and weirdness of the axis wonderwaffen keeps reducing. Like a waterfall or collapsing static, it fades closer and closer to reality. They never replace or increase their super-weapons and the new ones they invent are always just a little bit more possible.

At the same time, Spacehawk grows less powerful, less incredible, less imaginary. He uses his incredible Rocketship less and less. Wolverton seems embarrassed by it, and with its childishly simple lines and bright green and yellow colouring, it does look silly. It never did before, in the depths of imaginary space, amidst the bold curves and bright colours of Wolvertons embroidered void, but now, compared to real bombers and real battleships and real rockets that really kill human beings, it looks more and more like a toy.

So, eventually, Spacehawk goes to the President (the White House dome is coloured bright red) and volunteers his scientific skills to aid in the creation of a new super-bomber. He builds this in a quotidian factory and is spied on by some quotidian saboteurs. In the end the saboteurs steal a new super-tank and Spacehawk duels them in his super plane. The plane wins and this is what Spacehawk flies about in from this point on. The rocketship and its blast cannon are not mentioned again.

The plane however, is still bright blue-and-yellow. Not everything is gone.

THE MORAL PROBLEM

The moral problem is that, in real life, real soldiers and real civilians and real cities and real cultures are really dying and Wolveton, and everyone else, can see this in the papers and on the newsreel every week.

You can beat up fake Hitler in the comic as much as you want but when you put the comic down, real Hitler is still there and you satirising him looks less funny, more pathetic.

You can have Evil Germans fire gigantic razor disks into New York, and have Spacehawk stop them. But when the reader closes the page, real London is still really burning on the cinema screen.

The gap between the heroic dream and the fraught reality rob the dream of power every time they are contrasted in the mind. So the dream has to change. Wolverton has to try, gradually, to introduce Spacehawk to reality. Even if editorial weren't demanding it, even if the audience didn't want it, Wolverton would probably have to do it, he sees soldiers and sailors on the streets every day. How many people does he know in the military? How many people does he know connected to armaments factories and military technology? How many people does he know who are in danger? How many people does he know that have died?

So Spacehawk spends more and more time close to, and interacting with, 'real' soldiers, 'real' sailors' and 'real' airmen, and when he interacts with them, Woverton has to try to get them, and their technology, and their uniforms, and what they do 'right', and if not accurate, at least not absurd.

A few episodes into the war years, Spacehawk is seen in a suit, with a hat. He's been eating in a restaurant in New York.

The suit is a perfect Spacehawk-green and soon he takes off on his gravity belt to battle evil, astonishing the crowd, but a line has been crossed.

....

The moral problem and the visual problem feed off each other.

In some ways Wolverton actually becomes a 'better' artist during the final two thirds of Spacehawk. His ability to depict real technology and real people increases. He learns new artistic techniques. He can do shade and mass much more subtlety, he masters real fashions, real waves, real sunsets, real clouds. He even learns darkness. He does it to get better as an artist and he probably does it out of respect to the people involved.

And it slowly kills the comic.

It's not fierce. It’s not strong. It’s not strange. It’s not intense.

It’s not NEW. Wolverton can no longer invent worlds, toy-box cities on the horizon, no new alien races, no strange _things_ filling the foreground. He tried to make up with it with plants and flowers, it’s not the same. He can no longer create, he must replicate.

It's just a war comic, and though not bad, it’s probably not even amongst the best war comics.

The colour-logic and form-logic and invention-logic of Spacehawk fall apart.

You can't have insane bright primary blocks the way you used to and they can't be bound by the same strange but complete imaginary forms. Wolverton pumps those bright signifiers back in wherever he can find an excuse, but it’s not enough. You can't have a half-bright, half-imagined world. The aesthetic is too tight and too strong. The sky turns blue, actual pale, sky-blue blue, the colour of a real sky, and it never should. The battleships are grey.

GREY! In a Spacehawk comic!

BROWN!!

The Nazis try to help by painting entire bomber divisions red, but it’s not enough.

Spacehawk gets his own Supervillain, Dr Gore. A human as smart and scientifically able as Spacehawk, but dedicated only to evil. Though in the story Dr Gore is a Thorn In The Side of Spacehawk, aesthetically he is there to rescue him. The Doctor only wears an entirely-blue costume, he creates insane super-technology which demands insane super-heroism to defeat. Eventually he has to be banished to Mars.

Mars! The only real callback in the entire series and it happens in the middle of the War years. This is the only reference to outer space in those years. Will we see Mars again, and the cruel Valley of the Insects?

No. Gore escapes back to earth and Spacehawk chases him through a brownish valley until he jumps into a river.

Though drenched in bonkers transformed-orientalism, Spacehawk couldn't be racist in space, there was simply no-one there to be racist to. It the vulture-men are evil, cringing, crooked and sly and wear all the trappings of a Fagan-like intelligent 'Lesser Race' then that’s just what Vulture Men are like. There will be a new alien species along in a minute and they will be entirely different. None of the aliens or monsters seem like vectors for feelings about any real races at all. Tyrants and cowards are bad because they are bad. That's Spacehawk.

By the time it reaches earth Spacehawk is definitely racist, specifically towards the Japanese in all their yellow-skinned, slant-eyed, buck-toothed glory.

I don't really feel any offence reading these stories, it seems about exactly as racist as the mid-range of the background culture and pretty typical considering the two groups are locked in a high-casualty civilian-burning industrialised global megaconflict. But there it is.

DEEP, BLACK WATER

Spacehawk dies by degrees, the death is longer than the life and it comes to a terrible finale in the two last adventures.

In his penultimate issue, Spacehawk chases tire thieves.

This almost makes sense. Rubber is an industrially vital material in the war economy and probably the government has had a word.

It's still, in every respect, the most shameful, quotidian, low-level mediocre thing that Spacehawk has ever done.

The Woman returns, finally, at the end she comes back like Morgana La Fey arriving on the ship to take away Arthur to the other kingdom. This time she's a lost movie star. Spacehawk tries to play a trick on her to teach her a lesson _about rubber_ and through a relentlessly unfunny series of misunderstandings and mistakes they both end up on top of a water tower after being chased by the police.

Not only are there no strong colours, it's gloomy, its dark. Spacehawk makes mistakes. Everything happens in the mid-range. Everything happens on the streets of a normal American city. No-one believes Spacehawk is who he says he is. Where the first episode had every character shouting Spacehawks name as if his identity came before him like a burning halo; "YOU'RE SPACEHAWK", "SPACEHAWK.. HERE?", now even tire thieves and police officers can't believe its him, even when he's right in front of them, "YOU - SPACEHAWK? HA! MASQUERADING AS SOME ONE ELSE WILL ONLY GET YOU A FEW MORE MONTHS IN THE JUG, BUG C'MON!", "MY! MY! LOOK WHO'S IN THE NEXT CELL! THE MAN WHO TAKES TIRES AND BLAMES IT ON SPACEHAWK!"

The demi god who began as an implacable emission of otherness, whose every act was an impossibility, who could literally scare the guns out of a bad guys hand, the guy whose method of escaping a jail cell was simply to throw himself through the wall, is now reduced to near-pratfalls.

Trapped together on the water tower, Spacehawk and the Woman seem almost like survivors of a painful divorce looking back over a difficult relationship. There is a kind of despairing camaraderie.

And then the final episode.

Spacehawk battles enemy agents who have created a fake rock on the coast and filled it with a refuelling station for hidden submarines.

We started, if you remember, in a cave in space, and we end in another cave. The first glittered with pigment like a cluster of dropped jewels, every fold of rock was a distinct form with a carefully-applied individual colour like inset gems. We were in an almost shadowless world. This cave, the last, is truly dark. Wolverton has finally mastered shading, he can cloak his figure in a veil of shadows like he never could before. Light gleams on dark water for the first time.

Spacehawk blows everything up and captures two thugs, maybe the same pair of Bad Men who open and close so many Spacehawk adventures, this time in human form.

"PERHAPS WE SHOULDN'T HAVE JOINED THE NAZI CAUSE KRUEGER!"

"YES - I'M AFRAID WE MADE A GRAVE ERROR!"

Spacehawk flies into the darkness with his cargo of villains, heading for America.

He will never arrive.

..........

COULD IT ALL HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT SOMEHOW?

I can't stop thinking; what it World War Two had never happened? Yes, millions of people would still be alive, but, more importantly, Spacehawk might still be good.

What if Wolverton had just carried on? It seemed like he was growing at an incredible pace just before Spacehawk was pinned to earth like a technicolour angel, to fade and die. What would SH have looked like after only another year? What would Wolverton have invented and how would the character have grown? Wolvertons way of thinking was unlike most other artists of the time. He wasn't trying to be what I would call a good 'pictorial' artist, one who's work was like book illustrations, he was a little bit like the future underground scene, that's why they like him, but he was working in a popular audience-facing medium. He was building a world like the Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon stories, but not the same kind of world, not a neatly unified one. he combined a certain kind of silliness, or aliveness or directness with a more traditional form. And he was inventing. Inventing inventing inventing. If he'd just kept going in his own direction, would there be a different strand in American Comics? Kirby-esque, Eisner-esque, Wolvertonian?

Friday, 29 January 2016

(Before we begin, I should state that everything I'm
talking about takes place during the 'Golden Age' of Spacehawk, the first 9 or
10 issues. The later issues will be discussed in 'The Case of the Missing Tires'.)

....................

Colour is the king comic this serves. More than that,
it's Wolvertons right hand, as if colour itself were behind him as he drew,
coiling in the air, reaching down to touch his pen.

Behind the artist stands a hierarchy of drives and
desires, abilities and skills. Like a court of
competing lords, each generating and solving particular kinds of problem
in particular ways. My best guess at Wolvertons court of art is this;

On the left;

On the right;

Queen Invention

Heroism,
Otherness

Empathy,
Technology,

An arguably-sketchy
(depending on what he used it for) Orientalism, and Patriotism.

King Colour

Form, Energy,
Expression

Bold Line,
Kinesis/Hapsis

Depth

Shadow

When any problem comes up, when any opportunity presents
itself, when any question is asked, the prime and first answer is always a
duel, or conversation, between colour and invention.

Can I invent something? Can I show it with colour?

HOW DOES COLOUR WORK IN SPACEHAWK

There are rules for the way that colour is used. They are
simple and strong and probably the most important rules in the comic. They are
the comics Constitution.

- Singular. No mixing, shading, feathering or any change
within a colour block. The depth or shape of objects is never given with
colour, only with line.

- Bound. It must be entirely bound by distinct, strong
lines. No flowing of one colour into another, or of one shape into another.

- Primary. Any colour used should be as close the the
strongest primaries as possible. Other, less distinct shades should only be
used in special circumstances or when the primaries have already been used up.

- Opposed. No colour should be seen against itself. That
is, no red against red, blue on blue etc. Colours should be counterpoised so
that seeing them against each other produces the strongest possible visual
signal.

You can see this re-colouring gets it really wrong.

HOW DOES FORM WORK IN SPACEHAWK

- Simple objects. Objects tend not to have much detail,
instead they have other objects. A wall, for instance, tends not to have
panelling, instead it has a vent, machine or mysterious flange.

- Distinct objects. Each object is entirely itself and
separate from its environment. What this means is that when you look at almost
anything in Spacehawk, you can imagine picking it up, detaching it from its
context and carrying it away.

- Everything is an object. Guns and people and space
ships are objects, but so is everything non-material. Outer space is an object,
it's like a thick blanket of wavy lines. Energy is an object, its a sharp
jagged spray locked into the page. The movement of rockets is a white pennant
that follows them about like a flag.

- Shape defined by line and nothing else. Each object is
usually its own colour. If it has depth, for instance, the curve of a bulkhead
or the folds in a jumpsuit, it will be given by short, strong lines or by
minimal crosshatching.

-
Subheading, RIVETS. If the shape or curve of any made thing in the story can be
defined by rivets, then it will be.

- Haptic. Things are depicted more how they feel than how
they would look. 'Fluid' objects like clothes or alien flesh are like clay, or
play-dough. Solid 'technological' objects are like smooth, hard, shiny plastic.
There are no fine folds or delicate things.

-
Subheading, Faces. All the alien faces look like they could be shaped out of
clay. At one point, Spacehawk literally shapes himself an alien face out of a
kind of clay. Alien faces should be massively over-expressive in the way that
children’s drawings are. Big eyes, big mouth, big nose, big teeth.

-
Subheading, Technology. This might be partially because it’s from the early
40's and real life control systems are not yet highly complex, but in SH any
technology, whatever it does, can be activated and very subtly controlled by
manipulating a few very simple objects in a mysterious way. Turning a dial or
wheel will usually do it. Either it’s a performed physical movement or its
triggered by brain waves.

THE STAINED GLASS EFFECT

The combination of the boldest possible colour groups,
distinctly separated and counterpoised, separated by strong distinct lines with
minimal in-block additions or detailing, and the overwhelming simplicity of
each individual object, creates what I call 'Spacehawk Stained-Glass'.

Spacehawk is so bright that if you wake up in the dark
you don't need to turn on a light, just open the book. It glows.

HOW DOES INVENTION WORK IN SPACEHAWK

- NEVER REPEAT, NEVER! NEEEEVEEEEEERRRR! SH and his gear
have to remain roughly the same (though they do evolve a bit), otherwise,
EVERYTHING should be different from story to story. Never repeat an alien race,
never repeat an alien world, never repeat a monster, never repeat a tree - even
in the same panel, all trees are unique, never repeat a natural object between
stories, never repeat any non-SH technology, never go back anywhere. Always
new. Always always always.

- Always invent. If Wolverton can invent something, he
must invent something. If he hasn't created anything original on a page then
there is something wrong.

- If can be alien, must be. Nothing can be any more
familiar than it has to be for people to understand what it is. Its the alien
version of a thing, or a new thing. Nothing is from the familiar, experiental
world. There should be almost nothing in the comic that you could find in a
normal home or on a normal street.

- Always increase, never return. Places, objects, ideas,
relationships should always be created new and whole and returned to or
reverenced again as little as possible. The world of Spacehawk, both the
physical and social world, is expanding endlessly, much faster than Spacehawk
can experience it.

- THINGS. If in doubt, draw more things. There are THINGS
everywhere. What the fuck is this thing, no idea. What the fuck is that thing,
no idea. Nodules, eruptions, objects, THINGS.

Nothing in Spacehawk can be the bad version of what it is
because it is the only version of what it is. The only Hornosaur, the only
Neptunian Crime Lord, the only Creeping White Death.

HOW DOES STORYTELLING WORK IN SPACEHAWK

- Multiple channels, same message. If two or three
different streams of information are being used, say an in-panel caption, a
speech bubble and a shown action, all channels must be used to intensify the
same message. They don't ironise, break apart or comment on each other. They
all say the same thing in a chorus. When Spacehawk hits someone, the hit has no
other meaning than the one shown. Caption - "SPACEHAWK LANDS A MIGHTY
BLOW". Speech Bubble - "TAKE A NIGHT CAP MY FACIST FRIEND!"

- Emotion. Emotions are always pure and overwhelming,
experienced one after another. No-one has more than one emotion in their heads
at any one time

- Colour serves reality last. If the background to a
talking head is one plain field of clour with no lines, then the colour depends
more on the emotional signal of the panel and the general colour composition of
the page than it does on any expression of 'real life'.

Anything can change its colour if it needs to, especially
backgrounds, especially in the early stories

Same with the sky, it can be whatever colour it needs to
be from moment to moment.

- The page is a microcosm. Every page should have a
microcosm of the scale of action for the whole story. It should have at least
one ultra close-up panel highlighting a particular action and at least one
ultra-epic panel of something incredible and widescreen happening (worlds
collide, rockets fall from the sky, dinosaurs stampede).

NEVER spend a page at the same scale of action.

- use the paint box. Try to get all the primary colours
into a panel, if you can't get them all into one panel, get them into one page.

- Impossible Hero. Everything that everybody says and
everything that everybody does exists to confirm the impossible and exceptional
nature of Spacehawk

INTENSITY

Wolverton works under powerful constraints. Sometimes constraints of choice, sometimes of material, like printing technology, sometimes of culture, many sci fi things haven’t been
invented yet.

The tools he uses are the simplest and most direct. The world he creates is the largest, wildest, least
familiar one he can envisage. It is the vast range and depth of things to be imagined
and the extraordinarily small but powerful range of available techniques that
produces INTENSITY.

His ambition and desire is continually overleaping his
ability. The inner vision (nearly) outstrips the hand. The true hero is always 'becoming' and the true heroic
story is also always becoming.

Mature artists doing things they know well can often
produce very good works but its rare for them to have the feverish life inside
them of artists with powerful imagination with
pushing against what they can do.

Intensity in Spacehawk is imagination pushing against
ability with the force of a Rocket Blast!

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Ask my now why something is a monster and you'd get a lecture, and it would take a while to wind its way.

Ask me when I'm twelve and you'll get an explanation. (It's becasue Morgoth was banished by Iluvatar or because Orks are a semi-fungal life form bred for war.)

Ask me when I'm five and I'll say that's what it is. A monster is a monster. It requires no referents.

Spacehawk is like that. It is what it is because that's what it is.

.....

WHAT IS SPACEHAWK

Spacehawk is a comic created by Basil Wolverton which ran for thirty issues from 1940 to 1942 in the pages of Target Comics. About ten of those issues are genuinely good and provide the aesthetic and creative heart of the series, almost everything I talk about here comes from those first ten issues. Beyond the point, the creative power of Spacehawk slowly dies.

The reason we are talking about it is becasue it is very beautiful and very strange.

.....

THE ARC OF THE HAWK

What is Spacehawk? Where does he come from? I'll let the comic tell it;

"WITH THE COMING OF INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL, THE LEGIONS OF THE LAW FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO COPE WITH THE PIRATES, KILLERS, AND OTHER CRIMINALS LURKING IN SPACE... THEN, APPARENTLY OUT OF NOWHERE COMES THE SUPERHUMAN ENEMY OF CRIME, THE MYSTERIOUS SPACEHAWK!THEREAFTER, BANDITS OF THE VOID BEGIN TO DISAPPEAR, FOR THEY SOON LEARN TO FEAR THE AMAZING POWERS OF THE SPACEHAWK WHO ALWAYS STRIKES WITHOUT WARNINGFOR EXAMPLE, HERE IS THE CASE OF GORVAK, NOTORIOUS MARTIAN SPACE PIRATE WHO BOASTS HE IS TOO CLEVER TO BE CAUGHT BY THE SPACEHAWK...

In the first two pages of Spacehawk we have two its its most powerful recurring elements;

The Bad Monster Men, these have every negative quality, they are cruel even to each other. Despite being innovative and crafty, they are always cowards. They are planning a crime.

And the Woman.

There are three or four female appearances over the history of Spacehawk, yet, in some way, they are always the same spirit, the same anima. The Woman is there at the creation of Spacehawk, she appears before he does, she will be there at every major shift in character, and she will be there at the end.

(We are also in a cave, with a space ship, the Chthonic and the celestial meet at the point of creations. We will end there too.)

These basic elements call out for the creation or the existence of Spacehawk, and so he appears.

Spacehawk is a masked figure in yellow and green. (We know this is a primal hero comic as the fundamental arrangement of heroes wearing red, white and blue and villains wearing green, purple and yellow, has not yet been discovered. Here at the dawn of things the colour signifiers have not yet been set.) He wears a bulky green jumpsuit/uniform. His helmet, his gloves and the handle of his gun are yellow. Some of these will change colours a little in the first stories, possibly due to printing errors, but more likely becasue, at least to begin with, things in the Spacehawk universe can change colour whenever they need to. (See 'The many-Coloured God!')

Spacehawk here is his most primal, alien and inhuman self. We don't even know if he *is* human. Like the most masculine of male heroes, he is utterly alone. He has no friends, he has no home, he has no social context. He doesn't even speak. On his first appearance, Spacehawk lets his opponent see him full on. (He will always do this.) The evil martian Gorvak looks up, sees Spacehawk, says "THE SPACEHAWK!" and is so frightened that he spontaniously drops his gun.

A signifigant percentage of Spacehawks opponents will drop their gun simply from the shock of beholding him. Some of the rest will have to have their gun swatted out of their hands. Only a few will keep hold of their weapon and these will be the most potent enemies.

Spacehawk rescues the Woman, whose first words are "YOU - YOU'RE THE SPACEHAWK!" (Spacehawk is told who he is twice. He needs to be brought fully into existance by the story.) He quickly sends the Woman to safety then goes after Gorvak.

On his way he interacts with a strange bat creature who offers to help.

"YOU LOOK FOR PIRATE SHIP? YOU FIND HIM 'ROUND BEND. ALL TIME HE COME HIDE HERE, KILL MY PEOPLE! WE HELP YOU GET HIM, MAYBE, HUH?"

"THANKS! I DON'T BELIEVE I'LL NEED ANY HELP, BUT IF I DO, I'LL SHOUT!"

This is important because it tells us;

A - All kinds of things in this story look freaky and monstrous, but not all are evil.
B - Spacehawk is not a threat to someone just becasue they look wierd.
C - Spacehawk works alone.
D - He's kind of a dick about it.

In their ship the Martians describe their criminal plan. Spacehawk appears, he and Gorvak draw and fire their Atom Guns at the same time. The energy beams meet in mid-air. Gorvak drops his gun and calls for help. The other martians hear that Spacehawk is on the ship and spontaneously run away out of fear.

Spacehawk breaks both his and Gorvaks weapons in his hands, tearing them physically apart.

"AS FOR GIVING YOU A CHANCE - WELL, I'LL BREAK BOTH OUR ATOM GUNS, AND MY FLAME GUN. THAT WILL PUT US ON AN EVEN FOOTING!"

He then wrestles Gorvak. Spacehawk seems to lose and Gorvak ties him up to be eaten by the Creeping Death.

Spacehawk then spontaneously breaks his bonds.

"I'VE LET YOU HAVE ENOUGH FUN. NOW YOU ARE GOING TO DIE BY YOUR OWN INFERNAL DEVICE."

He easily throws Gorvak into the room and tears out metal to bar the door. Gorvak is eaten. Spacehawk goes back to his ship and uses it to throw the martian ship into the sun.

"WELL, THERE'S ANOTHER JOB DONE!"

........

From this point on Spacehawk becomes more and more human with each story. He becomes more emotionally complex, more social, more creative more inventive with a greater range of interests and a greater capacity to care. Watching SH grow is almost exactly like watching a child grow up.

#2 Spacehawk and the Lost Tribe of Mercury

H helps some Mercurians protect their platinum from evil robbers. One kills the other out of greed and, after appearing suddenly in the depths of an alien ocean..

"YOU - *YOU'RE NOT REAL*! HOW CAN YOU BREATHE*? HOW CAN YOU STAND THE PRESSURE?

SH ejects the second robber up through the ocean into space where he explodes. (The catastrophic joining of air and sky is another common motif in Spacehawk.)

Instead of just leaving, SH uses his incredible science to evolve the water-dwelling Mercurians (at their request) into hardy air-breathers and helps them use thier platinum to build their city of Draxia.

#3 Spacehawk and the Perilous Planetoid Trap

SH rescues the same nameless woman from issue one. She asks him to unmask.

Although he says he has never been unmasked before, once he takes off his mask to kiss the Woman, he never puts it back on again. Spacehawk has a human face from this point on.

#4 Spacehawk and the Vulture Men from the Void

SH allies with a tribe of Moon People, this is the first time he has fought along anyone else or even involved anyone else in his plans. He defeats some Vulture Men who are bombing earth with terrifying corrosive gas.

This is the first time we have heard of Earth or seen it in the series. And in the last panel he says this:

"THAT WAS AN UNPLEASANT JOB, BUT THAT'S WHAT I'M HERE FOR!

His first expression sadness or regret.

#5 Spacehawk and Mayhem at the Martian Election

SH disguises himself as a Martian and stops an evil Martian from destroying his own planet with a gravity device after losing an election.

Again we see the rising water motif as the planets come close to collision.

#6 'Spacehawk and the Pirate City on Uranus'

This is the best and most joyfully insane SH story. SH follows a plutonian police ship to the pirate city of Gark on Uranus.

The Police are captured and thrown to wild monsters outside the city. SH arrives, too late, only brave captain Dakk is alive and badly injured.

Captain Dakk asks Spacehawk to implant his brain into the body of a giant beast so he can avenge his men, even Spacehawk thinks this is kinda tripped out, but he does it. SH returns to the city, is captured, tortured, and saved by a charge of quasi-dinosaurs lead by the police captains brain in the body of a gigantic 'Hornousaur' the evil leader tries to escape and the hornousaur spikes his craft out of the sky with its horn and the evil leader Jubun leaps out before it goes down.

Jubin - SPACEHAWK! HOW DID YOU - ? LOOK OUT! THAT MONSTER WILL KILL US!

SH - NEVER FEAR! THIS BEAST IS AN OLD FRIEND OF MINE!

Jubun is thrown to jungle creatures and eaten off-screen.

SH - THANKS FOR GETTING ME OUT OF A TOUGH SPOT, OLD FELLOW, AND CONGRATULATIONS ON THE THOROUGH JOB YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS DID! NOW I MUST BE ON MY WAY! PERHAPS I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN IN THE NEXT FEW HUNDRED YEARS YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO AS A HEALTHY YOUNG HORNOUSAUR!

this is the first time SH 'teams up' with another named character and the first time he shows any indications of individual friendship.

Another important factor in this story is that SH's shapeless yellow mittens have transformed into gloves.Wolverton has learned how to draw hands, but more important is that SH can now touch and be touched as a human being. His acquisition of human features goes along with his increasing human interests and like the forgotten mask, the hands stay human.

#7 Spacehawk and the Pirate from His Past

Hunting on Saturn, SH finds Galar, an 'old friend', another pink-skinned humanoid person who looks to be either human, or whatever the fuck species Spacehawk is. Apart from the nameless woman and the victims of the vulture men, this is the first other human-looking person we have seen in the series.

Galar has taken to crime out of boredom. SH fights Galar on the hull of a space ship, forcing him to stop his crimes, then he then redeems his friend by bringing him along on his adventure mission. The two defeat some pirates.

Galar - SO LONG SPACEHAWK, AND THANKS FOR PUTTING ME RIGHT! HOPE I SEE YOU AGAIN BEFORE ANOTHER SIX HUNDERED YEARS PASS!

Alone in his ship, SH feels what seems to be a moment of lonlieness.

I SHOULD HAVE PREVAILED UPON GALAR TO COME WITH ME! HE WOULD HAVE ENJOYED IT!

SH travels back to Saturn, but who should he unexpecandly run into but Galar!

Galar - I HAD TO COME BACK HERE AND GET A SUPPLY OF MEAT TO DO ME THRU MY LONG TRIP SPACEHAWK! THERE'S NO PLACE IN THIS GALAXY WHERE THERE'S SUCH HUNTING AS THERE IS HERE!

SH - RIGHT YOU ARE GALAR! AND WE'RE DOING OUR HUNTING TOGETHER!

The story ends with Galar and SH hunting together, SH's now fully-fingered human hand on the shoulder of his friend.

Now Spacehawk has not just a friend, but an 'old friend, a social context and a particular place that he is from. This is also the first time that someone can do something 'bad' in Spacehawk but be redeemd to the side of 'good'.

#8 Spacehawk and the Treachery of Smebar

The Woman returns, now she is 'Haba, Queen of the Noomites', a groovy blonde with bow lips, curled hair and a conical madonna-basque. Her evil chief guard Smebar wants to marry her and persuade her to world conquest. the queen is kind of into the idea of world conquest, but not marrying this dork, she wants Spacehawk.

So now we have a high status female character who is kind of potentially evil, kind of cool and instead of being rescued by Spacehawk, is actively hunting him.

Eventually the Queen tempts Spacehawk by commanding her armies to pretend-fight each other.

Queen Haba - SPACEHAWK, YOU KNOW I'VE ALWAYS LOVED YOU! MY WHOLE KINGDOM IS YOURS IF YOU WILL MARRY ME! TOGETHER THEN WE CAN CONQUOR AND RULE THIS PLANET!

SH - THATS A WONDERFUL COMPLEMENT TO ME HABA! BUT SUCH A THING IS IMPOSSIBLE! I'LL HAVE NO PART IN OVERPOWERING PEACEFUL NATIONS!

SH - HISTORY SHOULD TEACH YOU THAT WARLIKE GREEDY RULERS ALWAYS COME TO BAD ENDS! CONSIDER THE MARTIANS - HOW THEY BROUGHT DESTRUCTION ON THEMSELVES WHEN THEY FOUGHT TO OVERCOME THE SATURNIANS! AND WATCH WHAT HAPPENS TO THE NATIONS THAT WISH TO DOMINATE EARTH TODAY!

Queen Haba - YOU DON'T NEED TO PREACH TO ME! GET OUT BEFORE I HAVE YOU THROWN OUT!

Monsters are fought, maidens are rescued, evil is defeated and Queen Haba is redeemed. SH leaves with the tantelising possibility of seeing her again and an actual grown up relationship with someone equal to himself.

#9 Spacehawk and the Master Plan of Droon

An evil scientist tricks Queen Haba into promising him what he wants if he can bring Space Hawk. He lures SH by torturing his own servant and broadcasting the pain to SH's senstive pshychic mind. Revealed, Queen Haba slaps the shit out of him, SH knocks him out and he is eventually killed by his own tortured thrall.

This is a sad story, from this point on, by orders of the editor, Space Hawk will be defending America specifically and directly. He will no longer be in space. Although his adventures will be more grown up he will do no more growing up. The surge of emotional, moral and creative development that began with 'Spacehawk and the Creeping Death from Neptune' is over.

I MUST GO NOW HABA. UNCLE SAM NEEDS ME - MORE THAN YOU. BUT I'LL COME BACK TO SEE YOU SOON!

He doesnt, Spacehawk never comes back. Like some young men sent off to war, Spacehawks's emotional development stops here. This is the most complex relationship he will ever have. Haba, Queen of the Noomites is still waiting somewhere out there in technicoloour space.

All that can wait till my final post, 'The Long, Slow Death of Space Hawk'. Hold on comics fans becasue...

Hi reader of False Machine, I'm Nick. As Patrick says, please feel free to make this a team sport. My intent was always such, but so far, it's been sort of a lonely furrow ploughed.

I know the format is less than ideal, but tbe plan is to get something useable out there for both discussion and gaming. It can be returned to later in case someone wants to make it all shiny & brown. Or add passive perception scores to the 5e stats. Or just clean them up in general.

Saturday, 23 January 2016

"You are marked for death and the mark shall be the target of my Skeleton Marines!"

In the Degenerate Era, the dark doomed obsolescence of the Cosmos when the stars have burned to death and dying civilisations cluster round the embers of the white dwarf suns, the Grail Queen rules and holds a jealous memory of the single world that once defied her will. A pearl-world, blue and white, that lived long ago when the universe was bright with suns. Brooding on the burning memory of this ancient wrong, she summons from the corpse of the fated planet Melpomene, the giga-troubadours of doom and sends forth her legions of the Skeleton Marines. Floating in the famine-black and unrelenting cold, the slender Skeleton Marines cannot be stopped. Drifting through the ocean of deep time like plastic flotsam on a seeping wave, and cast into our reality like driftwood on a beach. Rising like the corpses of undead machines they advance implacably like the tick-tocking of a clock, wielding their entropic guns their black scanning eyes set now on earth!

THE CARAPACED GOD

"Bow to me heroes, for only by my will is your reality sustained!"

Clad in infinite unending onion-rings of trans-uranic iron teased from the torn hearts of worlds spiralling to nothing in the flensing event horizon of a cherenkov-strobing black hole. Armour flaked and abrading with the touch of unspeakable eons yet ever growing by the substance of his own dark thought. Each layer riveted with unique gnosis etched in sacred languages invented by prophetic monks. From his palace of shadow and slow-decaying waves at the end of all realities the Carapaced God rules and turns his hidden eye to earth and is displeased. Perhaps he wishes a continent moved, a second sun created, a nation drowned or time reversed. Or simply the slate of history wiped clean. Seeking some alteration he sends forth his sombre legions. Insect Priests, Twilight Knights, Tense Fetish Nuns and looming PanzerSnaelgle. The heroes oppose him yet he is an enemy that can never truly be defeated for should he fall, all reality would collapse into a screaming chaos.

THE CRYOGENIC RATS

From the decadent solar cubes of the Galactic Rim where ancient civilisations force the stars to burn as hypersquares comes an invasion force like no other, a force of frustrating anarchist women riding the reclaimed punked-up relics of a thousand years of fruitless war! Yet, these women claim no territory, seeking only the adventure of battle, bating the forces of mankind from the cockpits of their decaden-tech mechs and ion-drive-dreadnoughts, a battle the nations of the world are happy to join lest the foundations of their power be shaken by the Anarchists from Space!

THE HOUR GANG

United by a madman, twenty four of earths most ruthless gangster criminals team up To steal the Sty-le of ultimate control made long ago by ancient priests to help man fight the time titans who wish to speed up entropy and doom. Against all odds, they succeed! But the thieves bargain and backstab. No one trusts the other. The sacred Style is smashed and divided into twenty four pieces. Each of the gang is imbued with a distinctive extra-real ability which they use to do crimes worldwide. But each power reaches overwhelming unbeatable force for only one specific hour a day! Now the power to battle the Eons lies with twenty four criminals who care only for themselves. If they ever get together the Hour Gang will be unstoppable,but if they do not, doom calls for all of earth! Only their leader Mister Midnight imprisoned in a mirrored cell can unite them.

GREEN BEE - EARTHS SECOND GREATEST THIEF1

"I will be the greatest Fost Mask, I WILL!"

Using only his natural criminal ability and his distinctive hive of trained green bees Green Bee seeks to prove himself the greatest criminal of all time by stealing Frost Masks mask! He has never come close yet, but as his wounded pride burns ever hotter, his schemes grow ever more daring and complex. Perhaps this time?

THE TAN ARMY

The mad golemist that made Army Man had only a certain supply of strange green clay. Army Man used his problem-solving thinking skills to solve the problem that he was. He joined up with the heroes and fought his bad maker. The mad man secretly escaped and went into a secret cave only he knew about. He used the clay of a magic underground river to make the Tan Army. Fearless and strong. The toughest army on earth to beat. The Tan Army are perhaps the greatest military force yet assembled. Made to fight and be the strongest and best but without the rebel thoughts of Army Man. Who will they fight and where will they strike? No-one on earth knows....

THE ELD KING2

In the barrios and music halls. In the classrooms and social service offices. In the police cars and telephone booths. Hidden in the mirrors of the shop front windows. Through secret doors in the corners of rooms. Only children can see the Eld King who steals their souls and builds an invisible empire in the gaps of the adult world. To battle him, Monster Princess must use the Kinderagulator Ray to transform the Best Heroes into child versions of themselves!

THE LEAGUE OF THE YELLOW SIGN3

The Yellow Sign can be anywhere and you would not know. They are a secret conspiracy of mad cultists but they know how to act just like normal people. Some are doctors that pretend to cure the insane. But really they drive mad people more insane and give them the ability to seem normal. Underneath they are now part of the Yellow Sign. Mad people living in the real world. From decaying tenements and the corners of old bookshops, the League of the Yellow Sign seeks to infiltrate all governments. They will overturn the whole world and restore the lost monarchy of Carcosa, the line of Hastur from the shores of the lake of Hali where the black stars rise.

THE MASK OF THE MAD GOD

The mask lies waiting, ready to imbue its wearer with incredible power yet also with a terrible madness. The archon of some higher reality lost and locked within a mask. An exile poisoned by loneliness and hate whose spirit moves across dark waters. Anyone who wears the mask will gain the powers of creation itself with the power to make great heroes and villains with every touch or breath.
Every word the mad god speaks births original and independent life from raw cosmic nothingness. Even their unspoken thoughts are halos like dark oceans of black fire. Crazed and evil the Mad God makes only evil and destructive beings. Its screams are monsters, furies. Its words are villains, they are now as real as you and me. Yet, once the god was good. Its gentle words were peaceful animals that heal. Its joyful laughter birthed heroes of burning gold strong enough to challenge any evil thing it made. Should it sleep and speak within its dream the words make silver prophets. But who can make the made god laugh?

ENNUI

The sister of Frost Mask was an underground explorer. She wanted to be the best ever. She went too deep fell into a Dero cave. The perverted underground monsters drove her mad with terrible tortures and secret machines. She did not give up. She stole an influencing machine and escaped. Now she lairs in a decaying observatory somewhere in the Hindu Kush. There she places her influencing machine, able to detect any thought on earth and focus its influencing powers upon it. She has set it to detect thoughts of herself. Anywhere in the world, whenever anyone thinks of Ennui, the mighty silver alien device twists in its cradle of bronze and focuses its mind-altering powers. The ray of the incredible machine decays any thought it is directed at. For as long as it has power, no-one on earth can even think of Ennui. But the tortures of the Dero and the radiating waves of her machine have made Ennui strange and mad. As ruthless and dedicated as her sister. Perhaps more intelligent, but with even less sympathy for normal human people. She intends to re-invade the centre of the earth and lay claim to the empire of alien devices there, freeing mankind from their hideous grip, but placing humanity under her own control. Surrounded by her palatial expanse of junk and frantic ruin, she plots how best to continue her invisible war. Only the Selenium Princess, watching from her city on the moon, dares to try and penetrate the nightmare visions of Ennui.

Friday, 22 January 2016

"According to Cuvelier, the boy's mother was so repelled by his looks that she treated him with a coldness that provoked resentment expressed in savage outbursts against parents, siblings, and the world. What is well established by other sources is that as a grown man Du guesclin was the reverse of handsome, and at least in his younger manhood, subject to fits of furious anger.

..

Bertrand is described at this stage (adolescence) as of middle height (probably not much over five feet), with swarthy complexion, a flat nose, grey eyes, broad shoulders, long arms, and small hands.

....

The city's defence was commanded by a knight and an ex-peasant. The knight, Bertrand de St. Perm, was Du Guesclin's godfather; the former peasant, Penhouet, a self-made captain experienced in the ruses of warfare. He frustrated an enemy mining project by placing on the walls copper basins containing lead balls whose rattling pinpointed the excavation below and guided a successful countermine. When the Duke of Lancaster caused a herd of pigs to be driven past the gate as a temptation to the hungry town to surrender, Penhouet had a squealing sow led out as the drawbridge was lowered. The hogs stampeded over the bridge, which was promptly raised after them.

Du Guesclin joined a small relief force gathering at Dinan, northeast of Rennes. He was watching companions playing a game of tennis when he received word that his younger brother, Olivier, had been treacherously made prisoner during a truce. Flying into a fury, he rode the forty kilometres to Lancaster's camp, breaking in on a chess game the duke was playing with Sir John Chandos. The duke sent for Thomas of Canterbury, the English knight who had taken the prisoner. Canterbury demanded trial of the charge by judicial combat, to which Du guesclin readily acceded. Before a large assemblage of both armies the two champions fought on horseback, with sword and dagger. Canterbury sought to ride him down, and Du Guesclin stabbed the Englishman's horse, causing it to collapse, pinning its rider. Du Guesclin had to be dragged off his adversary, for whom Chandos and Robert Knowles pleaded mercy. Du Guesclin cooled down, and there followed a feast with the ladies.

....

In 1363 Charles de Blois helped arrange Du Guesclins marriage. The bride, many years younger than her husband, as Tiphaine Raguenel, a noble lady whose father had been one of the combatants in the battle of the Thiry. She foretold destinies by the stars and was reputed as beautiful as she was learned, in double contrast to the bridegroom, who expended more labour writing his name than in delivering a sword thrust and was reputed as ignorant as he was ugly.

....

I the winter of 1365 Du Guesclin's strange army wound through southern France to the passes of the Pyranees, its appearance made the stranger by the adoption of the Crusader cross, in honour of a scarecely serious intention of fighting the Moors. The Pope at Avignon, who had had no success in trying to get rid of the brigands by excommunicating them, gave the expedition not only his blessing but a large sum in cash, though voicing to Du Guesclin the sarcastic complaint that normally sinners paid for their absolution rather than getting paid for it.

Du Guesclin is credited with a speech to his recruits that mixed the penitential with the profit-sharing motive:

"If we search out hearts, we have done enough to damn our souls ... We have ravished women, burned houses, slain children, exacted ransom from everyone, eaten their cows, oxen, sheep, stolen their geese, pigs, capons, drunk their wines, violated churches ... For God's sake, let us march on the pagans! ... I will make you all rich if you [follow me]!"

What's are some concrete and interesting ways to make the political organization of whatever territory the PCs are adventuring in part of the game?EDIT: I'm thinking less of allegiance, than of form of government--monarchy vs magarchy vs police state vs federation etc﻿

TLDR: Pick a strong and distinct authority structure and mimic it in the built environment, family structure, police structure and assumptions of polite behaviour.

The Built Environment. Density, type, arrangement of buildings in urban spaces and villages; monarchies have semi-feudal castles surrounded by villages. Commercial or semi-liberal empires have town halls and streets of merchants and craftsmen. In magocracies every village has a big fucking tower right in the middle and libraries are centrally fortified courthouse/jails.

Anarchies are a bricolage of buildings.

Essentially the arrangement of power in the area is mimicked by the arrangement of buildings in its populated zones.

Are the roads and streets straight or crooked? Rome would make every highway laser-straight. Imperial France would tear up city sections and have the re-plotted in a rational way. The closer power is to the local area and the longer there has been continual peace and continuity, the more organic and individual the shape of cities, towns and villages will be. Straight lines mean control from above or recent colonial cultures.

...

Meeting People

Are people openly wearing weapons? Who gets to do that?

...

The way people dress and act in public and who gets accorded status in public. Scholars get treated like lords and knights in magocracies. Police States privilege those with secret authority- everyone dresses similar but there is a complex and powerful hierarchy just under the surface which locals know about but you don't. Liberal commercial empires might do it like Victorians with uniform dress codes but lots of room for big status displays, or they might do a version of our society with everyone wearing a kind of semi-individual low-level uniformity and subtle but powerful status displays like some people having ultra high-quality goods but you need to be part of that culture to work out who is rich and powerful and who isn't.

With hidden power and wealth structures then maybe some kind of WIS/CHA interaction could allow you to both perceive and affect those structures. Hih WIS characters would be able to sense who is important. High CHA characters would be able to mimic the invisible and subtle power displays better than others (low CHA PC's wold seem 'basic' or obvious, flashing wealth in the wrong way and losing status)

In a confident, large, powerful theocracy, people might not wear religious symbols and might be a bit flaky about observance in public as everyon is assumed to have the same religion, in a smaller, threatend theocracy people would be mich more publicly puritan as the threat of the Other would be closer.

....

The colour and shape of the public crowd can be a partial signifier as to the liberalism, or not, of the government. Are inter-racial couples common? Hidden? Expelled to the slums or the village outskirts? Same with gender stuff. Are people divorced? Polyamorous?

What are parties like and where are they held? Are they secret gatherings in someones house like Iran, or mass public events?

When you walk into a bar, do you need to know someones name or be a regular or have some kind of special knowledge to be served or for people to talk to you?

...

Family structure and assumption of authority. Families sometimes mimic or shadow the power structure of the wider society so when you meet a family its a bit like meeting the society entire. When you meet a family are they close, nuclear? Is it common for generations to live together or do people live very distantly from each other? Do they accept the authority of a central matriarch or patriarch? How does the matriarch or patriarch act? Are they liberal/authoritarian like a likeable victorian dad? Fascist and controlling like Hitlers dad? Vague and accepting like a flakey suburban parent?

...

Police and law enforcement are like a lens for the way a society looks at authority. Modern cops are dressed semi but-not-quite military in the ranks and dress like businessmen higher up, mimicking our tradition of capitalism and civilian control. So when you look at the way police dress in any society, they show you in miniature, the kinds of dress, codes and authority that society accepts.

What do cops and law enforcers shout at you when they are trying to get you to stop doing something?

What race, gender and religion are the cops? usually they will be lower-status members of the dominant group?

...

When people drink does someone say "god save the (king, queen, hierarch etc)!" like they might in Elizabethan england, and if they do, does everyone repeat it and is anyone a bit slow about it.

...

Pick an order in which strangers talk to each other (they always talk to the mage first in a magocracy, , to the cleric first in a theocracy, to the women first in a femocracy, to the armed figure first in a bad anarchy, to the highest CHA first in a nice anarchy) then have normal people freak out when the PC's break the pattern and talk to other people in the wrong way.

This was a bit blathery.﻿

Other, perhaps better answers are on the thread which I assume you can find if you are meant to find it.

Hook Birds are fucking disgusting, no one could like them and nobody does.

There are almost no 'natural' species of birds within the Zone. Instead, there are Hook Birds.

It's not clear where the Hook Birds came from or how they managed to drive off or out-compete the other birds since, in almost every respect, a Hook Bird is pretty shit in comparison. One would think that a more efficient, less physically-hideous species with a better flight capacity that does not spend most of its time pointlessly harassing human beings would eventually displace the Hook Birds. But this does not take place.

There might be, and probably are, several inter-relating species of Hook Bird. They look pretty different. Nobody cares about this as they are universally awful. They tend to have the following qualities in common;

APPEARANCE

They look like crude, badly-designed birds with a little of the lizard in them. A bit vultury-looking, kind of like a retarded toucan, a crack-addicted chicken with little t-rex hands, or maybe like a turkey from a bad family.

Almost all Hook Birds have hooks and these usually protrude from the elbows of their wings. Some have shrivelled wings and what look like weird little secondary claws coming from somewhere near their shoulder. Some have teeth.

Hook Birds use their hooks to scrabble around on the trunks of trees. Mainly you see them scrabbling, scratching, flapping, hanging, pecking, clawing, climbing and screaming rather than flying.

They are capable of flight but rarely seem to do it. Perhaps it takes too much energy. If you ever see one take off it looks like a schizophrenic feather duster trying to fuck itself to death. If you kick a Hook Bird off a branch it simply glides to the ground in the laziest way possible, half falling, looking you in the eye as it goes, before landing in a heap, screaming and wandering about or just lying on its back and refusing to get up, whilst screaming, and staring at you.

Hook birds can put on astonishing bursts of speed when chasing each other about or dashing back and forth on pointless Hook Bird business, yet when threatened, even when one of a flock has been taken out by a slung stone, they only watch with a moronic stillness that may be real stupidity or simply a kind of idiot contempt.

Their colour tends to red. Sometimes a muddy, bloody, crude red, sometimes fading into old-stain brown, sometimes as vibrant as a new wound.

BEHAVIOUR

Hook Birds hang around like drunk thugs or under-employed teens. Though they are (probably) insectivores they never seem to actually hunt insects, or to do anything except scream. If you look at them, they are there looking back at you, waiting.

Though they are aggressive creatures, thankfully Hook Birds are also cowards. Despite their omni-presence in the Zone (it certainly feels as if you are never more than a few hundred feet from a Hook Bird) they rarely attack.

Sometimes though, a thrill of malignancy runs through a Hook Bird flock and they set off, dedicating themselves to fucking someone over.

Viscously opportunistic, the Hook Bird will attack anyone, or anything that seems weak. Especially people made vulnerable by circumstance, those, trapped, lost, injured or alone.

(A Hook Bird would certainly eat a person if it could.)

(A Hook Bird would eat a Hook Bird if it could.)

They flee very quickly if opposed but will follow at a distance till the end of the day, watching and waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Handily, following circling Hook Birds can be a good way to find lost workers as flocks usually gather near the bodies, waiting for the Fiddlehead Spiders to finish eating.

ROPE

Hook Birds like to eat rope. especially rope that people are hanging from They often bite and scrabble at the ropes used to climb Cloudgrave trees and build bridges. Some say they do this to line their nests, others claim that since the Hook Birds steal rope fragments continually throughout the year, it is a learnt behaviour indulged in specifically to put human lives in danger.

Anything in the Zone that's made of rope must have a slinger positioned nearby to drive off Hook Birds in the day. Nevertheless, they sometimes come silently at night and all rope must be continually checked and replaced.

THE CRY OF THE HOOK BIRDS

Hook Birds learn like parrots, they mimic human and natural sounds but the sounds they like most are those of anger and distress.

hook birds can tell when someone is upset and they like the kinds of sound that upset people make this is why hook birds try to make people angry or scared and hang around distressed people, repeating what they say.

If a Hook Bird hears something that it likes, it will repeat it to the rest of the flock, they will repeat it to the forest. This means the dominant cry of the hook bird is the scream, particularly the scream of someone falling from a great height.

If one of them hears this, it will repeat it and then keep repeating it and the cry will quickly be taken up by others.

As a consequence of this, the primary sound of birdsong in the Zone, the chorus that begins at dawn and runs continually until sunset, is the screaming of long-dead people repeated in the harsh metallic voices of birds.

Its important to note that if, when PC's are dealing with Hook Birds, they lose their temper say anything unpleasant, the Hook Birds will hear this and repeat it in their grating idiot voices.

Thursday, 14 January 2016

Tipping over a stone or tearing away a chunk of bark will
reveal some and they can be found pretty much everywhere, trying to eat pretty
much anything. Most zone inhabitants will receive a nip from a frustrated
centipede at some point but the poisons they carry are not strong enough to be
anything but an irritant to a human being.

Though they do not prey on mankind or provide any significant
threat, they are still a vital part of zone culture. Centipede fights, and the
betting upon them, are one of the few leisure activities in the zone and the
only one which unifies all classes and stations, ages and genders, though they
are especially popular with the cohort which is both male and high as fuck.

WHAT HAPPENS IN A BOUT

Only the largest available Centipedes are used to 'duel'.
This particular species can grow to between 8 to 12 inches in length and come
in a range of colours. Centipedes of dramatically different sizes will never be
allowed to fight, this would be unsporting.

The Centipedes are starved for a day or for two, then
placed in an enclosed space together. They fight to the death and the winner
eats the loser

The classic bout takes place on a cut piece of fallen
cloudgrave frond lodged in the ground and flattened off like the trunk of a
carefully-felled tree. Smaller bouts can take place on flat stones or, in a
'blind fight' the two creatures can be thrown together into a bottle or bucket.

MECHANICS OF A DUEL

SIMPLE

This is a good mechanic for a simple fight between two
Centipedes of average status on which the PC's are betting an insignificant
amount of money.

First each trainer decides whether they are starving
their Centipede for one day or two (most will starve to death after three).

One-Day Centipedes roll 2d6.

Two-Day Centipedes roll 1d12.

----To Begin----

First, once Centipede must insult the other. (The trainer
will usually do this for them.)

Second, the other Centipede must demand an apology or
satisfaction.

Third, after a brief pause for drama, the first Centipede
offers satisfaction.

The crowd goes
"ZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZoooooOOOOO-AH!", slowly raising its hands in the
air and, on the "AH!", dramatically slamming them to the ground.

The Centipedes are thrown into the ring.

The bout begins.

----Each Round-----

Each Centipede rolls its dice.

If the total numbers match for each creature match the
animals are assumed to be grappling. That round is discounted.

Whoever reaches 13 first is the victor.

COMPLEX

If PC's have staked a significant amount of money, or
perhaps an important favour, on the result of a bout, then they may wish to use
these slightly more complex rules.

The PC themselves should model and roll dice for their
favoured combatant, the DM, or perhaps another PC, should roll dice for the opposition.

A Centipede is assumed to have 10 hp, an AC of 10 and to
do d6 damage on a hit.

A 'two day' centipede has +1 to hit and initiative, but
-1 to AC and hp.

These stats count *only* to simulate Centipede duels,
they do not carry over into 'real life'.

Both parties should agree on the size of the ring and map
the rough position of their Centipedes. If a Centipede is driven out of the
ring area, it forfeits the match, and, traditionally, the owner of that
Centipede must then eat it alive in front of the crowd.

----To Begin----

First, insult.

Second, the other demands apology or satisfaction.

Third, pause, then "Satisfaction!"

The crowd goes
"ZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZoooooOOOOO-AH!", slowly raising its hands in the
air and, on the "AH!", dramatically slamming them to the ground.

The Centipedes are thrown into the ring.

The bout begins.

----Each Round-----

Both parties make attack rolls. If they hit, both make
damage rolls. These are considered to have happened at the same time.

After attack and damage rolls have been made, but before
the results are applied. The parties roll a d6 for initiative. Whoever wins
initiative can declare one of the manuvres below to avoid or enhance the effect
of a blow.

• 'Retreat!'
: If they got hit, the Centipede may avoid the effects of an attack roll by
declaring a retreat. Their opponent can move them a number of inches equal to
the opposing attack roll.

• 'Entangle!'
: If they hit the Centipede can wrap around its opponent. This does no damage
but stops them from declaring a manoeuvre next turn and lowers their AC next
turn by the value shown on the damage die.

• 'Focus'
: Instead of attacking, the Centipede concentrates on their enemies weaknesses.
Their next attack gets a +1 to hit and damage. This bonus stacks. If a
Centipede concentrates every round for 3 rounds and then hits, their attack
gets a +3 to hit and damage.

CENTIPEDE LORE

The unusual aspect of Centipede duelling in the Zone is
not that the animals are forced to fight, (games of a similar kind can be found
in many cultures) But the sophisticated lore that surrounds the assumed
character of the Centipedes.

In the Zone, duelling Centipedes are considered personalities
in a complex, evolving drama.

Any duelling Centipede must be given a name and a title.
The title must be a noble one. "Sir" or "Lady" at a
minimum. (Note: the actual gender of the Centipede has no effect on its name or
title). Usually, but not always, a centipede will start at relatively low rank,
however sometimes a centipede will be given a relatively high-status name
straight away if it seems obviously appropriate to the creature.

Exactly what makes the name appropriate is not always
clear. Some might have a distinctive feature or particular quality of
behaviour, i.e. a wounded Centipede might be called "General" or a
torpid one "Bishop", a beautiful one "Queen" or a
dramatically-limbed one "Emperor", but the exact relation of title to
creature is never exact, though the crowd will certainly know if a centipede is
poorly named and will mock its pretension.

As well as a name, each Centipede has an assumed
character, back-story, personality and, if it survives long enough, a dramatic
and labyrinthine personal history.

The Centipedes are imagined in the public mind as Nobles
vying against each other in some dramatic, continuous, ever-expanding tale.
Some Centipedes are assumed to be 'good' or heroic creatures, and some are
assumed to be 'bad' or villainous. This has no effect on their popularity with
the crowd, though bouts between one 'good' and one 'bad' creature always draw
the biggest crowd and largest bets.

Zonal Centipedes come in a range of colours, from dim
blue-black, to pale white, red, green, purple and some 'colourless' Centipedes.

Centipedes of the same colour will be assumed to be of
the same Noble family, organisation or house, though this does not mean that
they will not fight against each other

Like a street-name or an in-joke, no one person can
assign a Centipede its 'character'. The exact details of the imagined history,
personal background, and the invented slight that brought two centipedes to
battle are an emergent property of the audience. These histories might flex and
shift their form a little for a few bouts, but if a centipede keeps surviving
then its history becomes legend, to be preserved and transmitted rather than
argued over or invented.

Some of the more famous have a notoriety that passes
through the generations. Old zonals will often happily sit and talk of the
great centipede duels of the past, and will often remember the imagined
personal histories of their favourite centipedes.

Though a losing centipede always dies, the character they
play can return. Sometimes, if a Centipede is found which seems similar enough
to a previously defeated one, and if it seems appropriate, the 'character' may
return to the ring, perhaps to avenge their previous defeat. Such a creature
might be painted black to signify that it is 'incognito' then, should it win,
the ink will be washed off and its true name and nature revealed.

(If it matches its evolving story, a Centipede might even
be painted a different colour to signify that it has betrayed its house and
gone over to an opposing house.)

Of course if a famous character returns to the ring and
dies in the first bout, the crowd will simply say that they were a Pretender or
'false' centipede and that the 'real' personality is still out there,
somewhere, awaiting their return.

Players should always name their own Centipedes, but here
is a selection of possibilities.

Veins of the Earth Hardcopy

‘They've knocked it out of the park. Hit it for six. Got it in an arm bar in the first round. Pick your sport, pick your metaphor, doesn’t matter: the point is clear – so soon after _Fire on the Velvet Horizon_, Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess prove once again that something as unlikely as an RPG supplement can be art, of the most impressive kind. An amazing work.’ - China Mieville

FIRE ON THE VELVET HORIZON

"Superpositioning with strange panache, Velvet Horizon is an (outstanding) indie role-playing-game supplement, and an (outstanding) example of experimental quasi-/meta-/sur-/kata-fiction. Also a work of art. Easily one of my standout books of 2015." - China Mieville" Maybe my favourite thing we've made. If you like Scraps work click the pic.